Encyclopædia Britannica

“ The reputation thus gained by the Encyclopædia Britannica as a comprehensive embodiment of accurate scholarship—the word being used here for authoritative exposition in all departments of knowledge—carries with it a responsibility which can only be fulfilled by periodical revision in the light of later research. ”

“ The Eleventh Edition, which supersedes both Ninth and Tenth, and represents in an entirely new and original form a fresh survey of the whole field of human thought and achievement, written by some 1500 eminent specialists drawn from nearly every country of the civilized world, incorporating the results of research and the progress of events up to the middle of 1910, is now published by the University of Cambridge, where it is hoped that the Encyclopædia Britannica has at length found a permanent home. ”

“ To this end, the University of Cambridge has undertaken the publication of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and now issues the Eleventh Edition of that work. These twenty-eight volumes and index aim at achieving the high ambition of bringing all extant knowledge within the reach of every class of readers. While the work, in its present form, is to some extent based on the preceding edition, the whole field has been re-surveyed with the guidance of the most eminent specialists. ”

“ The impossibility of accomplishing, without the use of printing, all that the Britannica does, will present itself very forcibly to your mind, in another aspect, if you try to imagine 1,500 separate audiences, assembled each day to listen to lectures by the 1,500 contributors to the book. Any attempt to imagine the Britannica doing its work in any way but the way in which it does makes you realize, too, that if it were not for modern methods of spreading knowledge, there would be no such system of assembling and co-ordinating knowledge as finds its fullest development in the Britannica. ”

“ That great treasury of information on the whole circle of the sciences, and the entire range of literature, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, judiciously studied, will alone give what would appear to the average mind, a very liberal education. ”

“ The utility of such a work must appear abundantly obvious. By means of it, the Encyclopædia Britannica will be rendered more complete as a Book of Reference, and raised to a level with the improved knowledge and spirit of the age. ”

“ If you turn over the pages of this guide, and ask yourself, as you glance at the chapters, in what departments of general knowledge you are weakest, you will see what courses of reading will do most to make you an “evened up” man, without any weak threads in your intellectual texture. And, whatever you read, do not forget that the Britannica is a book of reference as well as for reading: that you are debasing your mind every time you leave unanswered any question that comes up in the course of the day’s work or talk, or while you are reading your newspaper. ”

“ It is not, of course, claimed that the idea of reading certain groups of Britannica articles in the order in which they will combine themselves into complete books is a novel invention. Thousands of men owe the greater part of their educational equipment to a previous edition of the Britannica. And not only did they lay out their own courses of reading without the aid of such a Guide as this, but the material at their disposal was by no means so complete as is the 11th Edition. ”

“ The amount of space which the new Britannica devotes to mechanical subjects, and the great number of expert contributors whose collaboration was enlisted in this connection, are significant from more than one point of view. All other general encyclopaedias, including earlier editions of the Britannica itself, seem to have been influenced by the old-fashioned fetish of “pure” scholarship and “pure” science, treating theory as a subject of study much more dignified than the application of knowledge to the practical affairs of life. ”

“ The Encyclopædia Britannica is a classic instance of a work made bulky by type unnecessarily coarse for its purpose; the later, amazingly clear, photographic reduction of the Britannica volumes is a recognition of this initial mistake. The Century and Oxford dictionaries, on the other hand, are splendid examples of the judicious employment of fine print for the purpose both of condensation and the gradation of emphasis. One has only to contrast with these a similar work in uniform type, such as Littré's Dictionnaire, to appreciate their superiority for ready reference. ”

“ You should therefore remember, in reading the Britannica, that whether you are only going as far as the uppermost layer of knowledge, or reaching down to the very foundations of science, the men whose articles you are reading command the respect that you can pay to them by giving your very closest attention. Do not imagine that because the book contains forty-four million words, it is made to be skimmed; every article in it is condensed ”

“ But he will find, to a remarkable degree, the best of all that there is in such special literature in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with the strongest assurance of its being authoritative, and with the certainty that for an outlay, small in comparison with what he would make for such special information elsewhere, he will get the guidance that he needs for his work and also information as excellent on any other subject that he or any member of his family may wish to pursue. ”

“ The quotations are for the most part provided with references, but they are not dated. Even when compared with the much larger New English Dictionary, the Century’s great merit is the excellent enumeration of meanings, and the accuracy of its explanations; in this respect it is often better and fuller than the New English. In the application of the encyclopaedic method this dictionary is conservative, excluding, with a few exceptions, proper names, and restricting, for the most part, the encyclopaedic matter to descriptive and other details which may legitimately be added to the definitions. ”

“ HISTORY, INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL When you turn to the new Britannica to study history, you naturally expect to learn a great deal that will be new to you. But you can anticipate something more and better than that. You will find a great deal that is new to everyone, even to those who have been reading history for years. For the contributors to the work, in making a completely fresh survey of the whole field of human knowledge, were helping one another to obtain new light upon the history of even the earliest periods. ”

“ The ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ the ‘English Encyclopædia,’ and the other great digests of human knowledge, in consequence of their high price, are accessible only to a few. In such works no special provision is made for supplying short and comprehensive information regarding individual words, arranged in their alphabetical order, of the kind most likely to be required by the great mass of general readers. ”

“ Let us inspect first the manner in which the world's great modern novelists and story-tellers are treated in the Encyclopædia Britannica. No better department could be selected for the purpose; for literature is the most universal and popular art. The world's great figures in fiction are far more widely known than those in painting or music; and since it is largely through literature that a nation absorbs its cultural ideas, especial interest attaches to the way that writers are interpreted and criticised in an encyclopædia. ”

“ Bibliographies are the charts by which students are enabled to navigate these vast seas of knowledge. The articles Bibliography (Vol. 3, p. 908) , by A. W. Pollard, assistant librarian of the British Museum, and Index (Vol. 14, p. 373) describe the technicalities of cataloguing and classifying books and their contents.
The Britannica is itself the most complete index to the subjects treated by books and the most complete bibliographical manual for the student that could be imagined. ”

“ This is the culture disseminated by the Encyclopædia Britannica, which “is a complete library of knowledge on every subject appealing to intelligent persons,” and which “will tell you more about everything than you can get from any other source!” This is the “supreme book of knowledge” which Americans are asked to buy in preference to all others. What pettier insult could one nation offer to another? ”

“ It is not only true that no ordinary library would supply the information to be found in the Britannica, but it is as true, and as relevant, that no ordinary library presents information in a form as stimulating to the writer who uses books as the tools of his trade. The editor-in-chief of the Britannica had all the world’s greatest experts in all fields of human knowledge and endeavour to choose from. ”

“ To the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica he contributed numerous articles, and his services as chief literary adviser in the preparation of the 10th and 11th editions incidentally testify to the high position held by him in the contemporary world of letters. ”

“ This work, which appears to have early sunk into obscurity, was published in 1745, in two folio volumes. Though its title affords no indication that it was compiled in the form of a Dictionary, its subjects are, nevertheless, treated in alphabetical order; and each Science and Art is discussed in a general treatise;—a part of its plan, which probably suggested a distinguishing feature, to be afterwards mentioned, in that of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ”

“ See the chapter on Geography in this Guide.
A Complete History of the World A strong taste for history is often found in children, and the new Britannica is, among other things, a complete history of the world, by the greatest historians of the present day. In respect to the treatment and arrangement of the historical section there are many things that make it especially adapted for young people’s reading. In the first place the great episodes of history, such as French Revolution, Renaissance, Reformation, Middle Ages, and Crusades, are discussed in separate articles. ”

“ Such articles give not merely location, population, railway service, commercial and manufacturing information, description of buildings, etc., but a historical sketch of the place, in which every date and detail has been verified with no sparing of expense or pains.
The Britannica as a Guide Book The Encyclopaedia Britannica is not merely a geographical text-book and gazetteer, however. It is an excellent guide book. The same care in details that makes it valuable as a gazetteer makes it a wonderful companion for the traveler, full of literary charm and readableness. ”

“ Its scope covers the whole range of human knowledge, everything that mankind has achieved, attempted, believed or studied. Its authority is doubly vouchsafed. The fact that the Britannica is published by the University of Cambridge (England) , one of the world’s oldest and most famous seats of learning, in itself gives such a 123guarantee as no other Encyclopaedia has ever offered, and the assurance thus given may be regarded as showing, chiefly, that there are no errors of omission, for against the existence of the errors of commission there is a further guarantee. ”

“ The writers of the Britannica have, among them, done so large a share of the world’s recent work in research and criticism, that no one who is engaged in writing a text-book or in preparing a course of lectures should fail to use the work as a check to test the completeness and the accuracy of independent investigation. ”

“ Although England can show nothing like the Journal des savants, which has flourished almost without a break for two and a half centuries, a nearly complete series of reviews of English literature may be made up from 1681 to the present day. ”

“ It may easily be shown that such a fear would be groundless, for the Britannica articles are all the better reading when one carries forward the interest which one of them has excited to others of related attraction. But to anyone who is firmly determined that he shall not be persuaded to read systematically, the Guide will none the less be useful, for he may flit from one chapter to another, selecting here and there an article merely because the account which is given of it pleases him. ”

“ The house were not only large publishers of standard works, but for many years the most extensive law-publishers in the United States, and also the largest importers of standard English law and miscellaneous works, introducing to American buyers the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” the dictionaries of Dr. William Smith, and many other standard works. ”

“ This remarkable list shows that women have contributed to the Britannica on subjects so varied as astronomy, medieval literature, medicine, sociology, linguistics, literary biography, art criticism, law and politics, political science and sociology, musical instruments, education, the Bible and ecclesiastical history, and philosophy. ”

“ As the Britannica article on Education indicates, the true value of education (not simply school education, but all education) lies as much in the influence which intelligently directed study exerts upon the mind as in the immediate usefulness of the information acquired, and the articles in the Britannica not only supply the most recent and authoritative information, but are so logically arranged, one dove-tailing into another, that they give the reader precisely that orderly view of knowledge which is the foundation of all mental training. ”

“ GENERAL AND INTRODUCTORY The art-student and every other reader interested in the fine arts will find in the Britannica the material for courses of reading of very great range and of the utmost interest and value—whether he wishes to study theory, practice or history.
Theory of Art Of course no adequate treatment of the arts, or of any one of them, could logically, much less advantageously, separate theory, practice and history. ”